Linux Mint Fails in 4K

It was running Linux Mint 18 and recently Linux Mint 19. And this was working fine, except recently I upgraded the monitor to a Samsung 40″ 4K TV – UN40MU6300FXZA. I found the Refurbished TV for about $290 for sale by Walmart a couple of months ago. This is quite a good price for this Samsung 6300 level TV.

Since I use this mini system to display photos and game screen shots a large high-rez display is just the thing. However, Linux Mint has never supported the display correctly.

As you can see, when in 4K [3840×2160], the display is sliced up and repeated across the screen. It works fine in 1920×1080 mode on Linux. From all the reading of the processor and TV specs, it looked like it should work fine and when I use a long HDMI cable to plug the TV into a Windows 10 system with a GTX 1060 card, it works fine too in 4K.

After spending a couple of days on various forums trying to understand and fix the problem on the BRIX with no luck, I had the bright idea of just trying Windows 10 directly on the system. So I made a Windows 10 install Thumb drive, removed the M.2 Sata, to avoid messing up the Linux Install with Windows 10, and installed Windows 10 on the 60GB SATA SSD. Worked like a charm and brought the monitor right up in 4K without problems.

I’ve recently had problems with my internet service. My DSL router is apparently re-syncing causing my public IP address to change. Apparently my ISP uses PPOE rather than DHCP, and apparently PPOE does not allow “Reservations”, which allows a client computer to use the same IP address if it reconnects within a given amount of time. Your home router uses DHCP, which does do reservations, so your computers LAN IP address does not change if the computer connects every 24 hours, which I understand is the default “Reservation” time.

Re-synching is not only a problem because the internet is out for a short amount of time, but also because the IP address change causes some games to require that you “Verify” your IP address by reporting a code that is sent to your email account. This is obviously an issue if the Re-Sync happens several times per day.

After quite a bit of research I found a windows service that logs the Public IP address to the Windows Event log every 15 minutes. I run one of my windows systems all the time, since it’s running Carbonite, so this system will run the PublicIpLogger program.

From Github, download the setup.exe file and run it. Then you can enter “view event log” into Cortana and you should see a choice to run the windows event viewer. The program logs your public IP address to the event log every 15 minutes.

As shown, under Application and Service Logs, find the PublicIpLogger events and there are a number of events that show the Public IP address, whether they have changed or not.

I’m a long time user of the Qt Development Framework. But every few years, it seems to change hands and everything about how to install it changes.

I recently installed it on Linux Mint, and while it looks like it is built in, the install was anything but simple.

But now I’d like to add a feature to one of my personal programs for Windows, so here we go again. I started by trying to look up a recent YouTube video on the subject and while it was only a year or so old, and all the domains were active, it failed miserably after the install in the same way that the Linux install failed. It was unable to find a valid “Kit”. A Kit for Qt is a set of definitions so that the IDE – integrated Development Environment – can find the other tools like compilers, framework libraries, debugger and make program. Well the Youtube video I found had the same problem. The install looked like it worked, but it brought along no tools, framework or valid kits.

Well I’ve solved that, so I’m making a post here so that I remember, and maybe it will help you too.

I have an “Equal Opportunity” network. A few Windows 10 systems and a lot of Linux Mint systems. And I obviously want to share files among my systems.

Over the years and versions, Linux Mint has gotten more friendly when sharing files with Windows systems. Samba has always been a thing, but in recent versions, Linux Mint has made it easier to get it going.

As you can tell from previous posts, I’m having trouble with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update on one of my machines. It’s an older machine and I suspect that Windows has broken a driver for the old motherboard. The latest version that worked properly was Version 1511 / 10586.545 and each time I restored to the last Restore Point, it went back to that. So apparently, the Anniversary Update 1607 / 14393.51 is the problem.

After going back to a Restore Point on two successive days, I turned off the Windows Update service and the machine was ok for a day, but I decided that this was too risky a state to leave the system. I have decided to move the system to Linux Mint 18, and this post is being typed into that system. It took about 2 hours to do the update, including installing a new system HD, and another couple of hours to set up Thunderbird email.

I have used Linux Mint for many years, and the latest is version 18. I prefer the Cinnamon version, but you may prefer another of the several window managers. For my choice, Cinnamon looks the most like Windows.

This machine is used for email, online shopping and document creation. It has two 1080×1200 monitors driven by an older GTX 270 card. Not the best for gaming, but just fine for it’s uses. Continue Reading

I had my Alienware Area 51 since about 2007 – since right before DELL bought Alienware – and about a year ago I upgraded to Windows 10. No problem. Here are the specs.

But the Anniversary Update fails miserably on this machine. It keeps waking up dead, if you see what I mean. A couple of days ago it was running, right after the update but without the 2 additional SATA hard drives. The drives were obviously still in the system, but Windows 10 did not see them. And Disk Manager did not see them either. So I did a RESTART with the start menu and got into a world of hurt. The system never finished restarting. After 10 minutes it was still doing an animation on the screen saying Restarting. So I used the power button, it failed to boot, and then finally I got it back by going back to the previous restore point using essentially the same process you see below, but it looked different that time. No application windows just blue screen dialogs.